The White House installed two political appointees in the studiously nonpartisan agency responsible for the 2020 census, and officials there aren’t happy.
The White House and Commerce Department forced the Census Bureau to take two new political appointees last week whose unexpected arrival has deepened fears at the agency that the 2020 census will be politicized, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Last Monday, Commerce deputy secretary Karen Dunn Kelley informed Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham and his career deputy, Ron Jarmin, that the two new appointees, Commerce aides Nathaniel T. Cogley and Adam Korzeniewski, had been installed in senior roles at the Census Bureau — a move that blindsided both of them, according to a Census Bureau official.
Cogley, a frequent radio commentator who received a Ph.D. in political science from Yale in 2013 and was the head of the department of government, legal studies and philosophy at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, will be deputy director for policy. Korzeniewski, now a senior adviser for Cogley, once worked as a Republican political consultant for the failed Staten Island congressional run of Joey Saladino, a Trumpy young YouTube star known as “Joey Salads.” Continue reading.